Ellis Genge: England squad have made pact that France Six Nations drubbing

England prop Ellis Genge, captain for Saturday’s record 53-10 home defeat vs France at Twickenham, says the squad have ‘made a pact’ it will not happen again, adding morale has been hit, but backs the group to show a better ‘mindset’ vs Ireland; Ollie Chessum drops out of squad with injury

Ellis Genge, England skipper for Saturday’s record 53-10 home defeat to France, says the squad has “made a pact [that] it will not happen again”, while admitting morale has been hit. 

Speaking exclusively to Sky Sports on Tuesday at England’s training base, Genge explained the adamant stance Steve Borthwick’s charges have taken since the heavy defeat, and has backed the group to respond and show a better “mindset” in Tests to come.

“We’ve had a review, it clearly wasn’t good enough, but I didn’t think anyone was under any illusion that it was,” Genge told Sky Sports.

“We’ve had some honest conversations as to why that happened at the weekend, we’ve cleared that up and made a pact that it’s not going to happen again.

“There’s a few factors, but I think ultimately it was down to physicality: letting them win the collisions, which led to some brilliant French offloads and a fair few tries.

“I don’t think the first few tries would have been [an attitude thing], but then obviously when you’re taking a pumping, sometimes you can switch off and think it’s easier to roll over, and that’s what happened at the weekend.

“I think it takes time to build a consistency in the sense that you can trust the person next to you every single time to, week-win, week-out, have your back.

“I think that’s what it boils down to, the mindset stuff. That takes a while to build, but I think it’s something I’ve seen from this group a fair few times. Look at the summer tour to Australia, we lost the first Test and it would have been easy to just say: ‘We’re not good enough,’ but we came back to win the series 2-1.

“It’s a bit different now in the Six Nations, obviously losing a record defeat at home, but it’s something we’ve parked and made a promise now to really push on.”

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